Where Is Your Guardian Angel Now?
by lizoftheinfinite
Summary: Because he is certainly not here. T for language, sexual references.
1. Chapter 1

I'm not quite satisfied with this, but I'm posting it anyway. So. Enjoy.

Based after the events of "The Poor Kid".

* * *

><p>So it's eleven at night and Karen's walking through the bad part of town, but she's not afraid because her guardian angel's out there somewhere. Her backpack is heavy, full of textbooks from her first days of sixth grade. Her fingernails are polished to perfection from hanging out with her friends after school. And then she hears the footsteps.<p>

She whirls, feet pivoting, and behind her are two men, and one is holding a rag.

Her mind processes fast, very fast, because she lives in fucking South Park and she's kind of used to situations like this.

"Don't kidnap me!" she screams. "My family's poor!"

"Hey," one of the men says, his voice a low growl, "chillax."

But the other is already moving towards her. She turns and runs, dropping her backpack. She was so proud of her first pair of high heels this morning. Now she trips and stumbles and falls against the pavement. She scrambles up and runs again, her hands scraped and bleeding, but they're already upon her, shoving her back against the wall to slam the reeking rag against her mouth. She holds her breath but the smell drowns her senses anyways, and she feels herself falling and falling until she's nothing any more-

* * *

><p>She wakes up in a room full of other little girls. She tries to stand and fails. The other girls are sitting around the room, glassy-eyed, staring at nothing. It reeks of sweat and fear in here. Dark enough to blur her vision. She tries not to panic.<p>

"What's going on?" she whispers.

"No one knows," the girl next to her whispers back. "The door's locked and we can't think of a way out other than to knock it down. But whenever we try to bang on it the people outside yell at us."

She rubs her head. "Oh."

Minutes pass. Nothing changes. Some of the little girls are sobbing. Others and rocking back and forth.

"Why are we here?" one screams. "What's going on? I want my mommy!"

"Shut up, you idiot!" another yells back. "Don't you know? They're going to eat us!"

Immediately, pretty much all the other girls in the room start to sob. Karen is the only one who can swallow back her tears. In a few minutes, the girl next to her manages to ask:

"Aren't you scared?"

Karen shakes her head. "My guardian angel's going to come save me."

* * *

><p>Now they're being manhandled and someone jams a needle into her arm. It hurts like a bitch, so bad she starts to gasp and whimper, but then a cool calm spreads over her. She thinks she knows what it is and she's scared but god everything feels so fuzzy and good and she just sighs and lets them force her into the back of a truck and she's still smiling even as they drive off.<p>

* * *

><p>When she regains her senses some time later she doesn't know how many hours have past. She can only remember colors and bright lights and she doesn't know what's happened to her. She's leaning over a toilet, barfing up her guts, and she's wearing a shiny strapless dress only grown-ups wear. Her head hurts.<p>

She wants to yell for Mysterion, but she has to keep throwing up.

* * *

><p>She still doesn't know what time it is, but at least now things make a little more sense. She's figured out the rules to this new world now. Like, if she jams the needles into her arm she feels fuzzy and happy for hours. Like, if she takes the money when the men come around in their cars she has to give it to the shouting man. And if the police come she and DeeDee and Elisa, the other girls she's with, have to say they're just waiting for their parents to pick them up, no matter how late it is.<p>

And she might be young, but she lived in freaking South Park for the first eleven years of her life. She knows what's happening to her.

So she knows exactly what she's doing when they pay her.

One night DeeDee doesn't come back after getting into a car and she and Elisa are waiting around and it's four in the morning and the dope is wearing off and she can feel afraid again.

"Let's go back before Lenny gets mad," Elisa says, hugging her skinny leather jacket. Lenny is the shouting man. Karen likes her nickname better.

"We can't go back without her!"

"She's gone. Probably lying in a ditch somewhere. I bet someone killed her!"

"Don't say that!" Karen says, and she has to swallow hard to keep from crying.

Elisa glowers at her with disdain. "It's okay to cry, you know. I don't care."

Sure you don't, Karen thinks, but she speaks up anyway.

"I'm not sad or afraid or anything. I don't need to cry."

"Sure you aren't."

"It's all going to be okay. Mysterion's gonna save me. He – he's my guardian angel."

"God, you're so naïve." Elisa starts to stalk away, her high heels clicking.

* * *

><p>She dreams she's back at home, eating strawberry poptarts while her brother teases her. Then he picks her up and hugs her like she's little again.<p>

Then she wakes up and she's with a bunch of other drugged-up little girls in a ghetto apartment that serves a pedophile's sex trade base. Her head still hurts and she can't process the world around her right because of all the drugs they've been giving her.

She cries.

* * *

><p>She's being kicked into the pavement, boots slamming into her ribs. She's screaming at them to stop but the man keeps kicking her. She doesn't even know why he's angry. She's a slut, useless, just something to use. It doesn't matter. And he leaves without even paying her. Jerk.<p>

She sits up curls her knees to her chest, back against the grimy alley wall. Her mascara smears. She rubs her eyes.

She doesn't even know how old she is.

She hasn't thought about him in a long time because thinking about the past makes her heart hurt and she's already got enough pain in her life.

But every once in a while, she wishes for him. Times like this.

"Hey," she whispers. "Mysterion. You said you'd always be there to look after me."

No one responds, because she is still all alone.


	2. Chapter 2

I re-watched 'The Poor Kid' in a better mood and decided to write a sappy sequel. The suckiness that follows is the result of me being high on chocolate.

There are probably some typos in the following, so don't be afraid to tell me.

* * *

><p>It's maybe one or two in the morning, and she really wants to find another john so she can fuck him and get back to her apartment. She hugs herself and taps her high heels against the pavement. There aren't any of the other girls on the corner anymore, and she feels lonely (even though they won't protect her).<p>

A guy in his late teens pokes his head out the window. His frizzy red hair falls over his face. "Listen," he says. "I'm not looking to buy, but I think you're a little young-"

She's already stepping back into the shadows. She hates social workers. They scare away all the customers.

The red-headed guy falls silent. He stares at her. She stares right back at him, too used to the watching eyes to even flinch.

Then, finally, he says, "_Karen_?"

* * *

><p>She sips her coffee and eyes the guy she kind of recognizes as Kyle Broflovski. He keeps on watching her.<p>

She pulls the arms of his jacket tighter around her. She has to admit it's a lot warmer than just her spaghetti-strap dress and ripped-up tights. She rubs her eyes and sips more of her coffee. Makeup comes off on her hands.

"You-" he says, then stops. "You . . . you went missing five years ago. What happened to you."

She shrugs and drinks more of her coffee. A quick glance at the clock reveals it's almost three. Shit. She still has to find a way to make two hundred and fifty more dollars by tomorrow night, or Mickey'll be pissed-

"Do you ever talk?" he asks after a few seconds.

She shrugs again and chugs the last drop. He calls another waiter over.

After her coffee is refilled, he says, "Shit, what am I thinking, your brother-"

He fumbles in his pocket and she reaches out and grabs his wrist, glaring.

"Jesus," he says.

She keeps glaring.

He pulls his hand from his pocket.

She lets go and withdraws.

"What do you want," she finally says.

He blinks. "From you? Jesus, I want to get you-"

"I cost two hundred an hour." She gestures to the clock with a flick of her hair. "So you'd better-"

"Karen, shut it."

She shuts it and hides under her curtain of hair.

"When you went missing," he says, "we all felt it - you were always the tagalong kid, the group's little sister. But Kenny - I don't think he's recovered even after all this time. When he sees you-"

She makes a strangled sound and gestures to herself with her red-painted nails.

"This? Why would he be happy about _this_!"

She stands to go. It's his turn to grab her wrist. He glowers. And she knows she's never going back.

* * *

><p>They drive to the airport that morning. She wants to - she doesn't even know what she wants to do. Say goodbye? To who? The other whores she rooms with? Her fucking <em>pimp<em>? She has no carry-on luggage. The only stop they make before jumping on the plane is to buy her some new clothes from the ridiculously overpriced airplane shop. She has to get size-zero jeans because malnourishment throughout puberty kept her shrunken and fragile. She's still emaciated; her hipbones jut out against the fabric of her jeans.

She washes off the makeup and stares at her face in the mirror. Sunken cheekbones, veined-red eyes from lack of sleep and drug abuse, bottle-blond hair with the brown showing at the roots. She's surprised Kyle managed to recognize her at all.

She pulls on the t-shirt he bought for her, just an "I LOVE NEW YORK CITY" tourist attraction. She looks at herself in normal clothes and scrubbed-clean face for the first time in how long and . . . she breaks down crying.

* * *

><p>"I called him," Kyle says when she leaves the bathroom about half an hour later.<p>

She nods.

"He was asleep," he adds. "But he woke up and he - he sounded so freaking happy.

He wanted to talk to you, but-"

She shakes her head. He nods. "Yeah. Thought so."

They get on the plane.

* * *

><p>After about an hour she starts to panic. To keep it down, she asks Kyle about life in South Park. What the hell he was doing in New York in the first place.<p>

"I go to Columbia," he says. "I'm a Freshman in college. Going to try to get a degree in Economics-"

She makes a face, and he laughs.

"It's not really that bad. I find it interesting. Anyway. Stan and Wendy got married right out of high school, and they're disgustingly sweet together. They both go to University of Colorado, Denver. So does Cartman. I try to avoid him as much as possible." Kyle wrinkles his nose. "My little brother's about to finish high school. He skipped a couple more grades, yeah. And Kenny's a mechanic, a damn good one, and going to community college on the side."

She chews her lip. "What were you doing - at one in the morning -"

"Couldn't sleep," he confesses. "Nervous about midterms next week. Thought driving around would help. It didn't, obviously. But at least-"

He smiles wryly. They're both silent. Then:

"Ruby?"

He blinks. "Oh. Yeah. You were pretty good friends with her, weren't you?"

She nods and pulls her knees to her chest. She gets flashes of memory sometimes - a scrawny little girl who kept flipping her off- but years of drug abuse make everything in the time Before foggy and unimportant.

"She's going to school, I guess. I guess you will too when you get back."

She shakes her head.

He doesn't say anything.

She gets that he knows it's not going to be that easy.

* * *

><p>The hallucinations start to come during the drive out of the Denver airport. It's been more than a couple days since her last trip. She starts to mistake the shadows in Kyle's rented car for dark creatures. She starts screaming. She doesn't know anything else real after that. Everything is flashing lights and color. Everything is trying to eat her.<p>

* * *

><p>She wakes up in rehab.<p>

* * *

><p>They won't let her out.<p>

* * *

><p>She sits in her bedroom for hours on end; she eats along with the other prisoners . . . <em>reformers<em> . . . she reads magazines, then finally works her way up to books. The hallucinations don't come very often now. Then days go past without any freakouts and she knows she's better.

She still has to go to group therapy and talk about all her fucking problems.

She asks to see her brother. They refuse. She's not allowed to have visitors.

* * *

><p>Then one day, they let her out.<p>

Her brother is waiting in the lobby.

* * *

><p>He looks the same and a lot different. More muscle. Shaggier haircut. A lot of worry lines. His orange parka has been swapped for an orange jumpsuit, unzipped, with oil stains on.<p>

He's crying when they lead her into lobby. He just looks at her, and he mouths her name, ("Karen", and it feels so good to be called that and not 'slut' or 'whore' or some other fucked-up moniker). She blinks at him. He holds out his arms.

She runs into them and she is home again.

* * *

><p>His apartment is small. She's just glad he's not living with their parents.<p>

"Where are they?"

"Jail. They get out in a couple months. We'll go to see them."

She nods. "Kevin?" He was always distant; he barely noticed her; he was shoplifting by eighth grade and probably didn't even know she was missing until someone pointed it out to him.

"OD'd two years ago." Kenny's expression twists into a grimace. "You're all I have left. I mean." He stops. "I'm sorry you had to find out this way-"

"I don't care about him," she says frankly, because it's so hard to care about anything, even her brother, right in front of her.

* * *

><p>He goes out and buys her tons of clothing and toiletries. She doesn't have the energy to go with him. Then he brings a box into her bedroom (actually the guest bedroom) and plops it on her bed.<p>

"I pulled this out of storage," he says.

He dumps the contents of her box on her bed. Out pours dozens of stuffed animals. All hers from five years ago. She picks up Mr. Fluffles, her teddy bear, and hugs him to her chest.

She cries again.

_Stupid, stupid, stupid_. Customers hate it when she cries. Stoicism has been ingrained into her. _Smile and act pretty and you'll get more boys-_

Kenny tries to hug her. She pushes him away.

* * *

><p>She pads into the kitchen late that night to find Kenny sitting and staring at the wall. Just staring. Not doing anything.<p>

She hugs Mr. Fluffles and stands in the doorway. He looks at her and cocks his head.

"You were Mysterion all along, weren't you?" she asks in a low voice.

He dips his head in reply.

She grits her teeth. "I thought . . . you had super powers . . . I thought . . . _why didn't you save me_!"

She's turning and running for her room now, but he grabs her around the waist and holds her tight and won't let go no matter how much he pushes.

"I hated myself for a long time for loosing you like that. Maybe I still hate myself. And I have no fucking clue what we're going to do, how you're going to survive in this fucked-up world being as fucked-up as I can tell you are - don't lie to me, sis, don't you dare lie, I can see it in your eyes. But I do know that we're going to figure it out somehow, and yeah, 'we,' because I swear to God I will never leave your side. So get this through your skull," he says fiercely. "I love you, little sis. So please. Stay with me. Let me help you."

"Promise . . . next time . . . you'll rescue me . . . " She lets him hold her and then she hugs him back, and, okay, _now_ she's really home.


End file.
